Rarely in films or literature is a sequel as good or better than the original.Except when it comes to the Beer Box Find of unopened trading cards in a 90-year-old aunt’s attic in Tennessee. For the better part of a half-century the cardboard gold had been stored in a Stroh’s beer box.

This past spring the first-round auction of this collection consisted of 13 boxes containing hundreds of sealed packs of decades-old baseball, football, and basketball cards. The sale by Mile Hight Card Co. netted $885,622, including $514,746.00 for a nearly full box of unopened 1948 Baseball Cards.

The aunt’s husband, the late uncle of the current seller, owned a confectionary company that made card sets based on popular 1960s TV shows. The old sports cards had been bought for research and development.

The hefty June auction profits motivated the 78-year-old nephew and consignor to go back to the aunt's attic in search of more treasure.He hit the jackpot again with an additional 17 boxes of sports and non-sports trading cards and test issues, predominantly from the 1960s. His first call was to Brian Drent, Mile High's president.

All the bottoms of the second batch of Topps boxes bear pencil marks noting the date and place of acquisition; mostly Brooklyn, the company’s headquarters. The salesman gave the uncle samples and he kept them totally intact, as if they were in a time capsule.

In May, after receiving the consignor’s first phone call, Drent jumped on the first plane from Denver to Tennessee for Beer Box I. Earlier this month, he was back in the skies again. Sitting around the same dining room table, Drent noticed the world’s most famous Stroh’s box on the floor in the exact same location, “It was like it had never moved,” he said.

His eyes zeroed in on the box of 21 packs of 1965 football cards. “Only a handful of packs have been known to exist,” he said. “Now all of these!” The set features key rookies of Willie Brown,

The 1960 Leaf baseball. The packs look "weird" because of the marble inside.

Photo by Mile High Card Co.

Fred Biletnikoff, and the glorious Joe Namath.This Namath rookie card in near-mint-mint+ condition averages $92,433.00, according to vintage card prices. Drent believes a mint example which may be in one of the sealed packs would fetch four times that, or $400,000.

One of my all-time favorite sets, ever since I collected it at the age of 10, is the 1971 Topps baseball cards with their bold black borders. A box of these holds 23 of the 24 original packs from the coveted 1st series of cards, which seldom surface. The third and fourth series go for $35,000 to $40,000. “This box should sell for $70,000,” Drent said.

The stand-out of the 1971 set is Munson, the only card of a superstar whose second year is morevaluable than his rookie year. All the cards’ edges from that year are fragile because of their black borders. “The Munson is notoriously off-center,” Drent added. At the vintage card market’s peak a year ago, a mint Munson sold for $31,000 on eBay. Earlier this year, another fetched $20,000 on eBay.

The 1968 Topps Test Basketball. This is the only pack known.

Photo by Mile High Card Co.

The rest of the baseball boxes are a cornucopia of oddball issues from the early 1960s. Here’s your chance to tear into penny packs of 1962 Topps Baseball Bucks featuring the likes of Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron. The same players also show up in the 1964 Photo Tattoos. To my surprise, a mint Mantle books for an impressive $1,400.

Finally, there are 1960 Leaf baseball cards. The 144-card set has a modest assortment of Hall of Famers, compared to Topps, such as Brooks Robinson, Duke Snider, and Orlando Cepeda. “They are not incredibly valuable,” Drent said. “The packs are weird-looking with marbles inside.”

Due to Topps’ monopoly in this era, rival card-makers couldn’t include bubble gum in their packs as premiums. Fleer tried an awful-tasting cookie. “[Instead of a sweet treat] Leaf inexplicably placed a small marble into each pack of cards,” notes PSA. “Some kids probably thought it was a jawbreaker, and tried to eat it anyway!”

A 1964 Topps football box. The set includes greats George Blanda and Jack Kemp.

Photo by Mile High Card Company

The last major American sport, basketball, stands very tall. Mile High is offering the only known 1968 Topps test basketball unopened pack. This set is so rare and mysterious that card gurus don’t even know if Topps ever actually distributed it. The only card that even popped up on eBay over the past several months, an off-center Dave Bing in near-mint to mint condition, has an asking price of $15,000. “People are going to freak out when they see this pack!” Brian declared. “No one has seen a wrapper!”

Finally, Beer Box II includes an extraordinary collection of boxes of pop culture cards, from the Beatles to Gilligan’s Island. I’m saving those cards for a future post. That story is on deck and will be up at bat soon.